Skinkers, Microsoft announce live, streaming content venture

Microsoft has announced a new product called LiveStation that will offer …

Using LiveStation, PC users can watch live, uninterrupted television from the comfort of their computer chairs. Developed by a London-based company known as Skinkers using technology from Microsoft Research, LiveStation is a way to stream live television content over a peer-to-peer network and use Silverlight to display that content content on the client's system. "This product allows you to steam live television on a computer over a peer-to-peer network, which means you don't need to use all the traditional server infrastructure and bandwidth associated with streaming," said Matteo Berlucchi, co-founder of Skinkers.

Since Joost already does free, streaming television with plenty of extra features, why would a company even bother to go down this road? The answer is simple: because it is taking streaming video one further by offering presumably free, live content. In a video demo, Berlucchi also notes that LiveStation will be easily modified to work with mobile devices.

Though the demo video doesn't show much except some live content from the BBC, this service definitely sounds promising. If LiveStation can get in bed with the right content providers, then it certainly could be a Joost killer. If nothing else, LiveStation will at least help ensure that Silverlight is installed on thousands of PCs across the world, meaning that it could also be an accessory to the company's Flash killer. Or perhaps all of this technology will live in harmony.

Currently, Skinkers is taking beta applications, but the LiveStation site warns you up front that only a few people will be chosen as testers. Get in while it's hot!

Update: As posted in the comments below, the LiveStation team does not intend for their product to be a "Joost killer."

Unlike what some people are saying, we are definitely NOT TAKING ON Joost! We love Joost and think it's a great idea, but we are trying to do something different and complementary: we are trying to get live TV on the computer. We believe that the user experience with streaming so far has never been really good enough. We hope to move the user experience a step forward and maybe to the point where people will look at LiveStation and think "Wow, I can ACTUALLY watch this and keep it on my computer".

It should also be noted that LiveStation is a trademark of Skinkers Ltd and not Microsoft; Skinkers acquired pieces of the technology from Microsoft in June 2006.